The MyAdvice team has your back! We provide great tips about optimizing your directory listings, posting relevant content on your social media pages, and how to increase your overall web traffic.
It’s come to our attention that some of our clients have expressed interest in companies that provide “reputation management” or “review management” services. Our Digital Marketing Specialists, as well as Google, strongly recommend NOT to sign up for these services!
To be more specific, watch out if a company offers these two services:
- Posting reviews to websites, such as Facebook, Google+, Yahoo Local, and Yelp.
- Gathering reviews from these listed sites and posting them to another page.
Google Will Penalize Your Listing… And Your Website!
The first listed service is highly concerning, as it’s a blatant violation of the Google Review Policy. Any company that provides this service qualifies as an “impersonator,” as opposed to a legitimate customer posting a review.
Penalties resulting from Google Quality Guidelines Violations include:
- Banning Google My Business listings
- Penalizing a website by drastically decreasing visibility
- Placing associated Gmail accounts that manage other Google My Business listings, including MyAdvice Gmail accounts
- Placing accounts that MyAdvice regularly logs into for management services at a great risk
The second listed service is not as concerning, but can result in a penalty due to duplicate content.
At this point if one of our clients uses a reputation management company or another third party to post reviews, we must release the Google My Business listing to the customer completely and no longer manage the account.
Generating Legitimate Reviews
Who would your Digital Marketing team be without offering tips to collect legitimate reviews? Here are a few ways for you to fill your pages with positive feedback:
- Verbally encourage patients to leave reviews.
- Post QR codes around your office that link directly to review pages. Patients will have easy access to your pages and will be more inclined to post a review following an appointment.
- Make sure that reviews are NOT posted from the office network. Google discounts reviews from the same IP address.
We know that your patients have great things to say about you! Let’s work together to gather legitimate reviews and boost your reputation organically.
For more information on the Google Review Policy, CLICK HERE.
